New blog url

Click here! Been awhile since I blogged, so I decided to start anew and change my url.

Traveling

As I begin my life as a working adult, I look forward to holidays more. For this year, I'll be traveling to BKK and Europe. Yes, Europe again! Burning my money. As usual I took up tuition to pay for it, so it'll be paid by one year's worth of tuition fees (actually one year of tuition fees is more than enough to cover the trip, I'll have extra to fund half a DSLR as well). 1 year of pain for 15 days of traveling, worth it? I've pretty differing views of tuition at different times. Some days if I'm tired, I will feel like tuition is a pain in the ass, but during other days, I feel happy teaching tuition cause I feel like I am making a difference.

But no regrets... Now I am at the stage where I have time, but no money. And it only takes up 2 hours of my time per week.

My itinerary for Europe trip in September: Prague -> Rome -> Santorini -> Mykonos -> Athens -> Budapest. I'll be going with Olivia, Fang and Debra.

Sometimes, I wonder if my love for traveling is driven by my mundane life at work. Overall, traveling is a very pleasant thing, I haven't met any person who dislike traveling, but perhaps I like traveling even more now that I have a job. When you have a job, you sell your time away, doing things you would not do if not for the money. And a holiday is a good break from all of that.

Life is full of trade-offs. I wish I had unlimited money to travel to every nook and cranny of the world. But nope, when I have some money, I will not have the time or the health. So I'll travel to new places within my means, cus I might never have the chance to do that next time. Meanwhile, I will earn the expenses of each trip with tuition!

Why can't I lie

Some days I hate myself. Hate myself for not being able to lie or not thinking before making a statement.

I've been to some interviews. So far, in all interviews I've been to, there's always something I said wrongly. I try to plan all my answers beforehand, but sometimes a random question pops out and I find myself responding too fast. Before I know it, I said something wrong. Words of truth slips out of my mouth. Damage is done. I don't get the job. That's it.

I've learnt this so many times, the hard way. But I repeat this mistake again and again. What to do? Blame myself and wallow in self pity? Praying for more interviews to come my way so I get more chances, and more chances to practise. Hopefully one day, I can be perfect.

Meanwhile, I'll have to endure at my current job. My punishment for being so truthful and speaking too fast without thinking what the interviewers would think of me. Sigh...

I have a morbid thought

What if there's just no meaning for humans to live? Just that we were born to this world with a long life, and to make time pass faster, we deceive ourselves and come up with the idea that our lives have meaning?

Isn't that not possible? Some days I keep pondering about my meaning in life and I can't come up with any. Yes perhaps I say I want to make a difference in someone's life. What's the use? The "someone" would probably die one day. We were all born to die, so how does making a difference in someone's "bound to die" life make you feel better? Everything is fleeting and easy forgotten, and probably have no meaning.

Meaning is probably an opiate everyone takes to make them feel better... About their meaningless life

I need to get over this

Myself

LKY

As everyone knows, LKY passed away yesterday. I was sadder than I imagined myself to be. I was surprised at my own reaction because I wasn't pro-PAP, as I was probably influenced by all the anti-PAP articles I read during GE2011. I couldn't vote then but I read all those articles with fervor, and I found myself deeply unsatisfied with them. I found that they were getting too complacent and there were many problems unsolved, like the lack of HDB flats, the frequent breakdowns of the transport system, the explosion of foreign workers in Singapore and high COEs. I was unhappy with CPF too, as I felt like the CPF was denying us our own hard-earned money. I guess quite a portion of Singaporeans felt the same way and that's how PAP lost its first GRC in Aljunied.

However, recently I start to appreciate what PAP has done. Maybe it's because I matured and also I saw PAP trying their best to rectify the problems in 2011. Since GE2011, there were more flats being built, so many that house prices have began to drop and everyone I know who needs a house managed to get one. I also appreciate the CPF scheme now and I think it's absolutely necessary. The government has to ensure that there some kind of safety net for Singaporeans when they retire. If there's no CPF, there would probably be more poor and homeless old people around as there definitely will be reckless individuals who will fail to save and have to rely on government for handouts  By implementing the CPF, the government ensures that everyone has some savings (no matter how little) for retirement and need not rely on the government. I mean, I bet Singaporeans also do not want their tax revenue to go to supporting such reckless individuals right? I also see efforts by the government to improve our public transport and curb the number of foreign workers. As for COE, I finally understood the government's rationale when I visited Bangkok for a holiday. There were so many cars in Bangkok as cars is pretty affordable there, but the jams were so bad!! It took our taxi 2-3 mins to travel 100m due to the jams. I got so frustrated inside the taxi because I felt like my time was wasted! I am glad there's COE in Singapore such that jams are minimized and we Singaporeans do not waste our time being stuck in jams. Perhaps Singaporeans are not grateful enough and 身在福中不知福

In light of all these realizations, I began to see that the PAP and LKY (all the next two PMs) did good things for Singapore and even though these policies might not be popular, they implemented it anyway. They could have chose the easy way out by implementing populist policies to get votes, but they didn't. They did what they thought was right and good for Singaporeans, and that's how we get to live in a successful country. That's what I think makes LKY exceptional.

However, I do not agree with his iron fist approach on some matters, such as media censorship.

I was also very touched by the love story between LKY and his wife. I was reading articles on them and some quotes really touched my heart. This is one of them:

We have never allowed the other to feel abandoned and alone in any moment of crisis. Quite the contrary, we have faced all major crises in our lives together, sharing our fears and hopes, and our subsequent grief and exultation. These moments of crisis have bonded us closer together.

 Also, accounts on how he cared for his wife after she was bedridden after a stroke touched me too. It is endearing to know how they cared for each other and managed to stay in love after such a long time. I took the chance to reflect on my own relationship and I think I would feel very sad if I were in their shoes. But of cause, it's irrational to be sad given that they have spent so many happy moments together. Afterwards, I felt like I should treasure every moment with Lx & everyone else.

Writing this post made me feel sad again... Sigh :(

Hoping